The invention relates generally to payment systems, and more particularly relates to transferring money between parties.
One party may wish to transfer money to herself, a counter party, or vice versa, for any of a variety of reasons. Frequently, a payor party owes a debt to a payee party or is purchasing something from a payee party. These purchases could be performed online or in-person at a point of sale (POS) terminal. A consumer typically carries a number of payment sources such as checks and cards to use in these purchases. During checkout, the consumer enters information from the check or card to allow transfer. POS terminals allow entering some of this information in an automated fashion using, for example, a check reader, a bar code reader, a magnetic stripe reader, a smart card reader, or a RFID reader.
In some cases, automated terminals gather some information from cards in an automated way. For example, airport kiosks allow entering a credit card with a magnetic stripe to read the name of the passenger to initiate a process for issuing a boarding pass. The passenger may also be able to enter this information with a keyboard.
There are electronic wallets available online to ease the checkout process. These electronic wallets store card information and demographic information that could be used to purchase items in an online checkout process. The consumer manually enters this information into the electronic which serves as a repository. Some online merchants are configured to automated pull the information from the electronic wallet needed to complete the transaction.
When paying for goods some payment accounts and/or merchants offer certain promotions. Not an exhaustive list, but some cards offer airline or other promotional points, warranty extensions, damage insurance, life insurance for travel, cash back on purchases, fraud protection, etc. Some merchants offer discounts also, such as, discounts for cash, cash back for some credit cards, delayed billing with or without interest, etc. In the case of credit cards, these promotions are detailed in term booklets that are littered with legalese typically written in small type.
In the appended figures, similar components and/or features may have the same reference label. Further, various components of the same type may be distinguished by following the reference label by a dash and a second label that distinguishes among the similar components. If only the first reference label is used in the specification, the description is applicable to any one of the similar components having the same first reference label irrespective of the second reference label.